Reading sessions involving electronic books, or e-books, have grown in popularity, and the electronic nature of the e-book experience presents new opportunities and challenges as the frontier of e-book technology advances. Many of the new opportunities and challenges pertain to enhancing the e-book reading experience.
An e-book is an electronic version of a traditional print book that can be read by using an electronic reader, or e-reader, device. E-reader functionality for reading e-books is in part provided by an e-reader device having a display for displaying text and graphics and a control input for receiving user input to manipulate e-book pages. Some modern e-reader devices include a touch screen display that is useable as both a control input and a display.
E-reader functionality may be provided on a dedicated e-reader device such as an Amazon.com Kindle™ or Barnes & Noble Nook™, or provided as an additional function of a communication device, such as a mobile telephone, a personal digital assistant, a personal computer, or the like. Any device that provides e-reader functionality is rendered an e-reader device. A present example of a mobile telephone device that may be rendered as an e-reader device is the iPhone™ smart phone, which is presently manufactured by Apple, Inc. of Cupertino, Calif. For example, an e-reader software application running on the iPhone™ renders the iPhone™ an e-reader device. A presently available e-reader software application is Stanza provided by Lexcycle LLC, which is presently owned by Amazon.com.
In operation, e-book content is downloaded to the e-reader device and then displayed as text and/or graphics, generally on a page by page basis. For example, e-reader devices provide user interfaces that are used to virtually turn pages and provide input for searching and requesting particular e-book content. Once a page is read, the user can instruct the e-reader device to present the next page, and so on and so forth. In response to a search query, content or pages responsive to the query are presented. Moreover, an e-reader device typically has wireless connectivity for downloading content and conducting other Web-based tasks such as browsing the Internet and receiving email.
One problem facing users of mobile devices rendered as e-reader devices is that mobile devices tend to include display screens having limited space for presenting content such as text. For the purpose of this disclosure, a text can be a letter, a word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter, and combinations thereof. Touch screen gesture techniques or buttons associated with controlling such e-reader devices are useable to zoom in and out on sections of text or to scroll through sections of text. However, it is easy for a user of an e-reader device to lose his or her reading place while zooming or scrolling text. Moreover, zooming and scrolling activities do little to assist the user's understanding of the text being displayed. Thus, a need exists for systems and methods that allow users of e-reader devices to have more control over the presentation of text such that the readability of the text is enhanced. One such enhancement could limit the opportunity to lose one's reading place while also increasing the understandability of the text. Another enhancement would maximize the output of an e-reader display.